The Johns Hopkins University Program in Racism, Immigration and Citizenship presents its Eighth Annual Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference:

Eyes on Surveillance: (In)security in Everyday Life

Friday, April 5, noon-6 p.m., Olin 305
Keynote: Friday, April 5, 6:15-8 p.m., Olin 305
Saturday, April 6, 9 a.m.-6 p.m., Sherwood Room, Levering Hall

This year’s conference interrogates the normalization of surveillance in our everyday life. Going beyond “surveillance” as a buzzword, the conference will present interdisciplinary research that considers what might constitute the monitoring of bodies and actions across a variety of lived experience. To deepen our understanding of surveillance, we ask: How can we critically think about the ways constant scrutiny exacerbates, rather than resolves danger, risk and fear, often for marginalized groups? Can we imagine surveillance as something that multiplies modes of insecurity rather than reducing them?

Bernard Harcourt, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University will deliver the conference keynote: “From the Expository Society to the Counterrevolution: How Surveillance Made Possible the Counterinsurgency Paradigm of Governing.”

The conference will conclude with a roundtable titled, “Surveillance on the Ground’ with Dornethia Taylor (Black Lives Matter DC), David Rocah from (ACLU-Maryland), and Emily Manna (Open the Government). Stuart Schrader (Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins) will chair the roundtable. The event will be held on Saturday, April 6 from 4-6 p.m. in Sherwood Room, Levering Hall.

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Co-Sponsors

• Departments of Anthropology, History, Political Science, and Sociology
• Programs in East Asian Studies, International Studies, Islamic Studies, and Latin American Studies
• The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute

Conference Schedule

Friday, April 5, 2019
Location: Olin 305

Registration and Lunch
noon–1 p.m.

Welcome Remarks
1–1:30 p.m.

Panel 1: Navigating, Negotiating and Resisting
1:30–3 p.m.
Chair: Marco Motta
Discussant: Sonal Sharma

Febi Ramadhan (Northwestern University, Anthropology): Capturing the Pain of Other: The Everyday Reenactment of Disidentification toward Homosexuality by the Spectators of Public Caning in Aceh, Indonesia

Qiuyu Jiang (McGill University, Anthropology): Navigating China’s Surveillance for Foreigners: Individual Strategies and Visa-Partnerships among African Migrants in Guangzhou

Noah Schuster (The New School, Politics): Surveillance Power in Contemporary Retail Labor

Coffee Break
3–3:15 p.m.

Panel 2: Texts and Aesthetics of Surveillance
3:15-4:45 p.m.
Chair: Jeanne-Marie Jackson
Discussant: Marios Falaris

Karen Alderfer (New York University, Media, Culture and Communication)

Heba Islam (Johns Hopkins University, Anthropology): Entangling the Fictional and the Real: Writing Surveillance in Pakistan

Thayer Hastings (CUNY, Anthropology): Making Maps and Monsters in Palestine: A Genealogy of Predictive Techniques

Dennis Ohm (New School, Sociology): Surveilling Sex, Immunizing Monogamy, Queering the Archive

Coffee Break and Light Refreshments
4:45-6 p.m.
Location: Mergenthaler 111

Keynote: Bernard Harcourt, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Columbia University
“From the Expository Society to the Counterrevolution: How Surveillance Made Possible the Counterinsurgency Paradigm of Governing”
6:15-8 p.m.
Location: Olin 305

Conference Dinner and Reception
8–10 p.m.

Saturday, April 6, 2019
Location: Levering Hall, Sherwood Room

Breakfast
9-9:30 a.m.

Panel 3: Who Constitutes a Threat?
9:30-11 a.m.
Chair: Erin Chung
Discussant: Quinn Lester

Mohammad Bilal Nasir (Northwestern University, Anthropology): FBI Surveillance, Suspicion, and Islamic Skepticism in Muslim America

Peyton Provenzano (UC Berkeley, Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program): Rationalization as Resistance: Leveraging Open-Portal Data to Critique Police Practices in Richmond, CA

Khalil Habrih (University of Ottawa, Sociology): Living Under Surveillance. Critical Ethnography as a Space of Rupture: The Case of the Goutte d’or: Understanding Police and Race through Affects and Corporeality

Fathima Azmiya (Technical University of Mombasa, Department of Social Sciences): Navigating between Intrusive, Indiscriminate and Effectiveness of Community Surveillance in the Wake of Transnational Waves of Terrorism in Kenya

Coffee
11-11:15 a.m.

Panel 4: Space // Borders
11:15 a.m.– 12:45 p.m.
Chair: Alessandro Angelini
Discussant: Sarah Roth

Neha Meena (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance): Border Surveillance, Pastoralism and Affect: A Case Study of Western Rajasthan Borderland

Jake Silver (Duke University, Cultural Anthropology): When Outer Space Looks Back: Israeli/Palestinian Politics and the Vertical Imaginary

Themal Ellawala (University of Illinois at Chicago, Anthropology): On the Austere Gaze: Surveillance and Disciplining of Queer Excess on the Streets of Colombo

Matthew Mahmoudi (Cambridge University, Center of Development Studies): Datafied Refuge and New Digital Boundaries of Socioeconomic Life in the City

Lunch
12:45-2 p.m.

Panel 5: More Data, More Problems
2-3:30 p.m.
Chair: Canay Ozden-Schilling
Discussant: Nandini Dey

Krystle Shore (Waterloo University, Sociology and Legal Studies): Exploring Experiences with, and Implications of, the Surveillance of Vulnerable Populations: An Empirical Study of Project Lifesaver

Xavier Durham (University of California, Berkeley, Sociology): Black Mirrors, Black Windows: An invitation to Reflexivity on Epistemological Approaches to Surveillance Processes and Technology

Cierra Robson (Princeton University, African American Studies): Networks of Control: Race Surveillance in Oakland’s Domain Awareness Center

Monika Maini (National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, Education Policy, Planning and Administration): Dataveillance and Social Sorting: Reflections on Neo-liberal Surveillance and its Impact on Critical Thinking and Education for Democracy in Indian Public Universities

Coffee Break
3:30-4 p.m.

Roundtable: Surveillance on the Ground
4-6 p.m.
Chair: Stuart Schrader, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University

Participants:
David Rocah, ACLU of Maryland
Dornethia Taylor, Black Lives Matter DC
Emily Manna, Open the Government

Drinks Reception
6-8 p.m.